Located only a few kilometers away from the Pago de Cirsus, with a view of Tudela from the north and Bardenas Reales to the east, the strikingly avant-garde 4-star Hotel Aire de Bardenas takes a totally different approach to providing solitude. One of the select group of distinctive rural hotels belonging to the Nobles del Reino and Rusticae groups, it features only 22 secluded rooms offering guests the opportunity for complete relaxation and contemplation, a chance to be in unity with nature. And the hotel is set amidst the fields of La Ribera that provide Navarra with its abundant harvest of fresh produce.
As described in Wallpaper magazine, the Bardenas Reales “looks like the surface of the moon, and Barcelona architects Emiliano López and Mónica Rivera’s Hotel Aire de Bardenas like a lunar colony. Named after the wind that rolls in over the Bardenas desert, the hotel is a cluster of eight pale boxes around a main hall. They sit a little eerily, like the relic from 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the middle of a wheat field.”
This unique construction was the young architects’ first hotel project, and they found innovative ways to assemble very simple, completely recyclable materials to create a hotel that blurs seamlessly with its surroundings rather than simply to overlook the vast, open space. Each “cube” holds one or two rooms with ten others in the central building. All are built from prefab panels, and reused produce crates from local farms serve as a boundary walls and windbreakers. Those rooms in the central building not directly facing the dessert enjoy a private patio with fruit tree and open-air oval iron tub, which can be used year round.
All guest quarters have been decorated in simple lines using natural materials so as to blend in with the surrounding nature. The unusually deep baths and showers are separated from the sleeping area only by white cotton curtains. And each guest room centers on what the architects call an 'inhabitable window”: large, deep, glassed-in pop-outs with settees where guests can sit to contemplate the desert in silence.
The hotel also offers a seasonal outdoor pool plus restaurant serving the finest in natural cuisine including many vegetarian offerings.
Outdoor activities that can be enjoyed from both lodgings include mountain biking, walking, bird watching or Segway tours of the nature park. Horses, tennis and paddle tennis are available in the vicinity of both hotels as well. The El Cerro 18 hole golf course is due to open shortly, only five minutes away.
Both of the outstanding properties offer a unique glimpse into southern Navarra, its major wine industry and a peek at what Spain considers its main bread basket, producing the finest asparagus, artichokes and piquillo peppers in all of Spain, if not the world.
Please contact us to prepare a custom travel package with accommodations at either one of these highly unique rural lodgings.
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